Frank Alder

Frank Alder is the European Managing Director of Mallarmé Skincare Products plc and one of Rachel’s most important clients. His influence makes him a central figure in the Allday Sunlotion campaign, but his value to the agency also rests on a relationship Rachel has carefully cultivated: she can redirect his rambling discussions, report setbacks without surrendering control of the account, and use flattery to keep his support. That professional alliance offers Rachel leverage, yet its paternal overtones and Frank’s easy participation in a male social world reveal the limits of her security within it.

Identity and Client Relationship

At a meeting about Mallarmé’s marketing and advertising, Frank talks at length through issues Rachel has already addressed in her own presentations. She doodles while he repeats her points, and her private impatience contrasts with the energy with which she had begun the day. His manner is not presented as openly hostile; rather, his tendency to ramble makes him a client Rachel has to manage as well as advise.

When Frank turns to the imminent Allday Sunlotion launch, Rachel waits for a pause and brings the discussion back to the decisions already made. The pre-production meeting is set for the third week of October, and the media plan is being prepared: a few January spots aimed at winter sun-seekers, followed by a larger campaign in May and June. She presents the plan as settled and the agency as excited. Her intervention shows her practical fluency with Frank: she can acknowledge his speech while making sure that the meeting produces a clear account of the work ahead.

The relationship has taken years of attention. Rachel understands that Frank’s ego is a vulnerability she can accommodate to the agency’s advantage, and she regards carefully placed deference and praise as effective tools. She sometimes imagines a father-daughter undertone in his attitude toward her, but deliberately leaves that implication unexamined, concentrating instead on the fact that the arrangement is manageable and professionally useful. The closeness is therefore both personal in appearance and strategic in operation: Rachel knows how to make Frank feel valued while protecting her position as the person who can deliver the account.

The Bermuda Campaign

The Allday Sunlotion film is shot in Bermuda under persistently difficult conditions. After observing the problems for a couple of days, Frank leaves the proceedings by jet and appoints an overwrought product manager to take charge in his place. The substitute focuses on concerns Rachel considers largely irrelevant to the crew’s immediate difficulties. Rather than confront him, she avoids him when possible and agrees with him when she cannot; she then forgets his instructions as soon as the conversation ends.

Rachel keeps Frank informed directly, faxing him brief but honest progress reports each day. The routine gives their client relationship a practical function at a moment when the shoot’s day-to-day management has become chaotic: although absent, Frank remains the senior client to whom she reports, and her concise updates help her preserve a line of communication that bypasses the product manager’s distracting preoccupations. She relies on a detached, controlled manner to keep panic at bay while the weather and production difficulties continue.

The financial stakes are unusually high. Mallarmé has invested £500,000 in the two-week shoot, and a further £5 million media budget has largely been committed to airtime over the coming year. Rachel knows that there is little room for a botched film. The finished footage is ultimately made salvageable by a final twenty-four hours of brilliant sunshine and expensive post-production work carried out by Filmstyle. The agency must bear that additional cost, reducing the project’s profits, but Frank is still likely to receive a forty-second commercial reasonably close to the standard he expected. The outcome preserves the campaign, though it cannot erase the bad luck, expense, and strain Rachel has had to absorb.

Agency Gathering and Alliance

At a later agency-funded gathering, Frank gives a welcome speech after guests have served themselves from a cold buffet. His praise for McKenzie Cartwright, and especially for Rachel, sounds sincere, even though his remarks about the Allday Sunlotion film are restrained. He does not mention Cliff’s absence. Instead, he tells the party that speeches are banned the following night and that everyone is expected to enjoy themselves.

Rachel takes satisfaction in the welcome. Giving Frank a prominent role at an event paid for by the agency is, in her view, one of the ways she has nurtured him over several years. She believes that praise and deference, applied to the right parts of his ego, can work wonders, and that he and she together form a team Cliff will find difficult to rival. Her confidence depends not simply on Frank’s formal authority as a client, but on her own knowledge of how to make that authority serve the agency’s interests.

The scene also shows the intimacy and ambiguity built into the arrangement. Rachel sometimes reads Frank’s attitude as almost fatherly, but she does not pursue what that might mean beyond its usefulness. Her success depends on interpreting personal warmth as a professional resource without mistaking it for equality. At the gathering she feels, briefly, at home in her world of colleagues and clients; she has helped shape the occasion and expects the following evening’s party to be livelier, with a jazz band booked at her suggestion.

Frank, Rachel, and Workplace Rivalry

Frank’s alliance with Rachel does not free her from the gendered pressures of the business. When Cliff arrives at the gathering the next morning, Frank spends time speaking with him privately; the two laugh together, and Rachel tenses at the sight. She interprets their ease as evidence of a male club whose members seem more assured and powerful, a circle to which her professional competence cannot grant admission. Frank’s cordiality toward her and his apparent ease with Cliff therefore coexist rather than cancel each other out.

That tension becomes visible after a sporting activity, when Cliff gives Rachel a hard, uninvited slap between the shoulder blades. She is startled and angry enough to dig her nails into her palms to stop herself turning around and striking him. Frank appears on her other side and remarks on the difficult conditions, then praises Cliff’s performance and jokingly places it beyond Rachel’s league. Rachel agrees that Cliff is impressive, and links her arm through Frank’s, suddenly needing to feel aligned with him. The gesture briefly makes their alliance physical, but the protection it offers is uncertain.

Frank continues by teasing Rachel about her driving, calling her a tiger behind the wheel and suggesting that she could beat Cliff on a racetrack. He laughs, while Rachel recognizes that the rivalry between her and Cliff is both obvious and a source of amusement to him. She lets go of Frank’s arm and moves away. The moment complicates the dependable partnership she has constructed: Frank can rescue her from an uncomfortable exchange, yet he also treats the competition that distresses her as a joke. His role in the story is thus not that of a simple ally or antagonist. He is a valuable client whom Rachel has learned to manage, and his support brings real professional advantages, but the limits of that support become clear when her workplace conflict is converted into male banter.